Prediction of Particle Suspension State for Various Particle Shapes Used in Slug Flow Crystallization

Abstract

Particle transport is still an immense challenge in many processes today and affects both the operation and the consistency of the product quality, which is essential in the pharmaceutical industry, for example. Therefore, we developed a suspension correlation of particles in the crystallization process for a slug flow crystallizer in the field of small-scale continuous crystallization in this paper to predict and ensure a reproducible process and consistent product quality. Furthermore, the developed suspension correlation shall provide the possibility to perform mechanistic modeling of the agglomeration behavior depending on the operating parameters in the crystallization process. For this purpose, already existing dimensionless numbers were evaluated and modified employing force balances in order to predict the particle behavior in the liquid compartments in the slug flow crystallizer under different operating conditions and particle shapes of the substance system l-alanine/water using L-glutamic acid as impurity during crystallization.